Is this a kiss to build a dream on, or a curse to end one?

By Karen Kissane

July 9, 2011 — 12.00am

AT HER civil marriage service, there were moments when the woman about to become Princess Charlene of Monaco looked dazed. A weak smile struggled to turn up the corners of her mouth. She managed a real one only when the ceremony was over.

The next, at her big fat white wedding, she seemed more cheerful, even though at times smiling through tears. She and her new husband shared moments of warmth but his body language was often stiff and cool.

Princess Charlene and Prince Albert after their civil wedding.Credit:AFP

He looked down on her impassively as she dabbed her tears. He planted a brief and awkward kiss on her mouth with his eyes wide open - an ''ice kiss'', the British media dubbed it. She quickly averted her head when it was over. Later, on the palace balcony, she leaned into him - an almost-hug - but he was turned away, waving down to the crowds. For whom, perhaps, the whole show was intended.

A week into the marriage of Prince Albert of Monaco to a former Olympic swimmer from South Africa, there are already signs the fairytale has fractured. Charlene, 33, is reported to have been a runaway bride, trying to escape at least three times - the last time only days before the wedding.

Advertisement

Palace sources have reportedly said that when the then Charlene Wittstock visited Paris in May to try on her white silk Armani wedding dress, she ''took refuge'' in the South African embassy. She reportedly tried to escape a second time during the Monaco Grand Prix later that month. Days before the wedding, she allegedly was stopped on the way to Nice airport.

She is said to have bolted that time because Albert, 53, and a ladies' man of long standing, faces a DNA test to determine whether he has fathered at least one more child out of wedlock (he has previously acknowledged two).

Some reports claimed one new child, but the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche had anonymous palace officials saying ''policy advisers'' were discussing ''two illegitimate children - one already born, the other to come''.

A French magazine, Public, also claimed two others, one the son of an Italian woman. If this were true, the age of the child would mean Albert had cheated on Charlene, as they have been together for five years. She is 20 years younger than him, a delicate blonde with the elegance of his movie star mother, Grace Kelly.

The most startling claim was in the newspaper Le Figaro. A senior detective claimed that, when stopped at Nice airport, Charlene had her passport confiscated so the prince's entourage could ''persuade her to stay''. A princess in a tower? The brothers Grimm could do no better.

The palace has strongly denied the rumours, calling them ''ugly lies'', a product of envy and spite. A Monaco resident and real estate tycoon, Michel Pastor, told Journal du Dimanche: ''When the most famous of bachelors gets married, naturally there are jealousies.'' But the denials are being greeted with scepticism and the scandal has revived a centuries-old legend aired whenever there are ructions in Monaco's eternally troubled royal family: the Grimaldi curse.

In 1297, the first Grimaldi ruler, Francesco the Spiteful, is said to have disguised himself as a monk seeking sanctuary and then killed Monaco's defenders. Another telling of the karmic tale says that in the 13th century Prince Rainier I kidnapped and raped a beautiful maiden, who became a witch to get her revenge. She cursed the family for generations with: ''Never will a Grimaldi find true happiness in marriage.''

With the past two generations at least, the witch seems to have succeeded. Prince Rainier III lost his princess in a car accident in 1982 when she was only 52. Their younger daughter, Stephanie, wed her bodyguard before divorcing him a year later after he was photographed with a former ''Miss Bare Breasts Belgium''.

She then had a relationship with an Italian elephant trainer - moving her three children into a trailer so they could follow the circus - before marrying a Portuguese acrobat. That relationship also ended after a year.

Princess Caroline has had little more luck. She married a French playboy 17 years her senior when she was 21.

They divorced after two years and she married Italian businessman Stefano Casiraghi, but he was killed in a speedboat racing accident, leaving her with three young children.

She is now married to a German prince, Ernst August of Hanover. He has been embroiled in several violent encounters with media and police. Now there are rumours that this marriage is about to join the wreckage of the others.

Daniel Willis is an author and a genealogist of the royal families of Europe and went to the wedding in Monaco. He told The Saturday Age that Ernst August's absence from the wedding party was a strong indication that the marriage was over.

However, Willis is not so convinced that Charlene and Albert are in trouble. ''The only kernel I have been able to confirm was true is that there was one night in the last week where they had a tiff and she went to stay at a hotel,'' he said. ''The hotel was able to confirm that.''